Posts Tagged ‘vegan’

What makes a person feel full is not just how much food they’ve eaten, but also the type of food. Now scientists have attempted to rank a variety of foods for how well they can subjectively and objectively make a person feel full.

It is a sad state of life for many in Western countries that the abundance of food available to us, 24 hours a day, is driving weight gain and subsequent medical problems. It is also perhaps a sign of this privilege that researchers are looking for ways to categorise food based on how it can make a person feel full to help curb overeating.

Foods differ in their potential to cause satiety and this can be influenced by the energy (kilojoule) density and the presence of different macronutrients. Low energy dense foods such as salads and fruits generally have a higher satiety effect compared to a similar amount of high energy dense foods such as biscuits or chocolate. Foods higher in protein appear to be more satiating than carbohydrates and fat, while fibre deserves a special mention for its ability to increase feelings of fullness.

There are various laboratory studies that have attempted to objectively rank different foods according to their satiety value. But now researchers have explored more subjective measures of satiety by getting consumers to express their views. Subjective measures of satiety allow for inclusion of factors such as taste and palatability without being overly fixated on nutrient content.

Involving 1,127 participants, an online survey asked for consumers’ views on a range of subjective and objective measures of satiety of 100 different foods. Each food was presented as an image, and questions were asked about its perceived energy content, healthiness, palatability, macronutrient composition, cost and many other factors.

After correcting for the perceived energy content of a food, perceived satiety was associated with lower energy dense foods, lower fat percentage, higher protein content, and higher cost. Perceived satiety was also associated with greater healthiness, weight management, frequency of consumption and greater control of over eating.

Putting all this into context to the actual foods themselves, it was foods such as broccoli, carrots, tomatoes, lettuce, cucumber and rice cakes that had the highest satiety value for minimal kilojoules. It should be no surprise that vegetables feature prominently in satiety rankings due to their mostly low energy density and high fibre content.

What it all means

There are a myriad of ways to rank foods based on their nutrient, health or satiety value. The common theme among all these methods though is that fruit and vegetables come out on top, and discretionary treat foods high in fat or sugar come out near the bottom. It is making the small sustainable dietary changes to have more of the first, and less of the second, that is the biggest challenge for many.

As a writer who lives on St. Croix, I must use the Internet for the background research on the stories I write. On the negative side, much of what is published on the Internet is simply unsubstantiated personal opinions. Fortunately, I am living and working more than 300 years in the past and people have taken the trouble to electronically archive original documents and books on line.

When I find a page about pirate activity without a source for the information, I usually ignore it unless I can find a 300 year old source book with eyewitness accounts that substantiates the information. Where I find most of the worst information is when I am searching for new recipes or trying to find the nutritional value of what I eat.

Broccoli snack

For instance, another of my very low calorie snacks is steamed broccoli which can be done in a steamer or even a colander above a boiling pot of water. The water should not contact the broccoli, only the steam.

double boiler

While seeking the nutritional data, I stumbled upon the paragraph I quote below.“You probably didn’t see what was so great about broccoli as a child, but the truth is that this vegetable is one of nature’s superfoods. From its stalk to its flowering head, broccoli is packed with nutrients and vitamins needed for your overall health and wellbeing. This vegetable has been around for centuries, and it has always been used and viewed as the perfect go-to food.”

There are many superlatives in that paragraph even though it doesn’t give any really factual knowledge. For instance; Who has always used and viewed broccoli as the perfect go-to food? What is a go-to food? And how long is always? I like to give credit to the original author no matter how bad the work to confirm this was not a plagiarized post. I used two search engines (here and here) to check on the source of the sentence highlighted in bold. I found eight posted sources word for word on various health and fitness blogs all with a different authors so I have no idea who the original author was.
Interestingly enough, nobody bothered to leave a comment at any of the sites I visited so I assume that nobody really thought about what they were reading. I guess we will now have another generation of mindless mothers who will be feeding their kids broccoli because it is the go-to food full of the nutriments and vitamins needed for overall health and well being. Their kids would have been better off if Mom spent the same amount of time that she wasted surfing the Internet on taking her kids for a walk in the great outdoors or learning Arduino programming to teach to her kids.
On the other hand, Broccoli is bad for you, like, really toxic badwas written by Tim Crowe is an Associate Professor in Nutrition at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia and an accredited dietitian. He started off with a clear warning that “An alternative title I had for this blog post was: “Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet to do with nutrition”, but I wager this one was more effective in getting your attention.” He than published an over the top rant about the evils of broccoli before telling people that this was pseudo science, exaggerations and corruptions of scientific studies.

Professor Crowe received 158 comments many of them angry and negative because people missed or ignored the subtle warning not to believe everything you read on the net. Commenters feared that careless or unscrupulous readers might quote out of context and spread false informational about broccoli.
I decided to check and see if there was any other reuse of his article. Naturally I took one of his more outrageous sentences and searched, here and here to find other sites that contain the phrase, “And remember those thiocyanates I mentioned earlier? Well those too can cause bladder cancer in rats. We have graphic warning signs about cancer on cigarette packets, so why do health authorities continue to sit on their hands and take no action against broccoli?”
On the positive side, I found his complete article was reposted in full at FitnessReloaded.com by editor Maria Brilaki, a Stanford Engineering grad with an MBA. She helps over 100,000 monthly readers make better, healthier choices. She has a personal trainer certification and spends over 15 hours researching each article people read on her site. It’s all because she doesn’t want to fall for fads or hype anymore so searches for the truth like Tim Crowe.
Unfortunately, we are discussing Internet publishing so there is always an offsetting negative and the prize for that is Ben J. Johnson, Staff Writer for Natural Newd, a site that publishes pseudo science, deceptive science and science fiction. Of course young Ben only published the negative and avoided the part about how to tell real science from junk science as that would allow evaluation of everything published at his site.
As near as I can tell he even drops so low as to violate the terms of a free Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. He does lead with a link to the original article but lists his title as Staff Writer and notes at the end that the source is Broccoli is bad for you, like, really toxic bad by Tim Crowe.

When reposting. you must give appropriate credit to the original author of the material and indicate if changes were made. Well guess Ben is one of those people who never follows the rules.
I like broccoli, it is low in calories and I am not dead yet. I am also down to 202. Guess I’ll just keep snacking on Rabbit food and eat portion controlled meals. I would drop weight much faster if I quit drinking, I am just not ready yet.

I woke up Sunday at 203 pounds, only 23 pounds more to lose in 52 days. Should be OK, if I don’t have too many failures. Todays meal takes the carbohydrates out of Italian food by substituting thin sliced zucchini or summer squash for pasta in tomato sauce.

This recipe is more visual than wordy. I always have tomato sauce in my refrigerator so it is easy to put the sauce on early in the day and let it heat up in my coffeepot.

Prepping the Squash

The squash is pealed and both ends cut off. Then thin slices are cut from the squash.Notice the seed core is not used in this recipe. There is nothing wrong with the core. The resulting meal is just prettier if you ship it.

BTW, the two soursop’s I bought are not ripe but a friend of mine gave me a fully ripe one today and if your not familiar with the fruit, you might think it looks rotten. That is when they are at their sweetest best.

Soursop, Ripe and Green

Notice the ripe one is bigger than both of the one pound fruits. Therefore, I am looking at a 1000 calories. When I start to eat it, I will have to program myself to make a very light dinner or soup to offset it. Of course it is a sedative so maybe I will offset some of the calories by cutting back on wine. What ever happens, will happen and I will track it.

I am inspired!! I am down to 204 which is my lowest weight for 2015 and with very little effort. I am still eating well and drinking my evening wine but avoiding the soda, peanuts and coffee with cream in the morning. On Saturday morning, I usually take a trip to the Vegetable Market at Le Reine for my week’s supply of fresh Vegetable. Today there was an abundance of cucumbers and a couple of nice young eggplants. I always have sauce in my refrigerator so am planning on Eggplant Parmesan later in the week.

I keep saying that I nibble on rabbit food during the day but that is not exactly true. When I got home today, I turned my cucumbers into Refrigerator Pickles. Since there is no sugar in the brine, the calories are about the same and I like the texture and flavor of pickles better.

Cucumbers are mentioned at least twice in the Bible (Numbers 11:5 and Isaiah 1:8) and history records their usage over 4,000 years ago in Western Asia when cucumbers migrated from their native India to be pickled in the Tigris Valley.

As far back as 850 B.C., Aristotle extolled the healing effects of “cured” cucumbers and Julius Caesar thought pickles had an invigorating effect and supplied his army with them.

Aside from the Bible, Shakespeare specifically mentioned pickled as in drunk and in the The Diary of Samuel Pepys (1660), the word is used to describe a mess “as the house is in a pickle”. He also used pickled as a substitute for drunk.

While the English never solved the problem with scurvy until about 1850 when they all became limeys, The Dutch Navy and others fought the disease with pickles and sauerkraut. Columbus’ ships were supplied with vitamin C-rich pickles, allowing sailors to make the long trip without being debilitated by scurvy.

Cucumbers were brought to the New World by Christopher Columbus, who is known to have grown them on the island of Haiti. Cucumbers adapted quickly to the new world and by 1535 Cartier found cucumbers growing in Canada, and they were known to the colonists of Virginia as early as 1609.

Somewhere along the line, someone figured out that instead of a fermented pickle like a kosher dill, people could make a pretty good imitation without the long and sometimes uncontrolled fermentation process. Refrigerator pickles have a nice texture and flavor and there is minimal risk of making a bad batch.

You need to make enough liquid to cover the cucumbers and onions. I reuse the liquid so I just add enough cucumbers and onions until the Jar is full but the following is a good place to start. There are hundreds ,perhaps even thousand, of truly different pickling recipes on the Internet. Some include dry powered mustered or Turmeric which I like but they turn the brine yellow which I don’t find appealing. Others add sugar and cutback on the water to make a sweet and sour syrup. That’s the last thing I need when dieting although my recipe for pickled beet eggs has sugar, but not enough to make a syrup.

Directions: Slice onions and cucumbers and add to an appropriately sized container with a sound lid. I used one gallon sized. Mix water, vinegar and salt in a pot and make sure salt is all dissolved. Toss the spices into the container, don’t worry about mixing them. Add enough brine to over the raw vegetables. Cover and swirl around to distribute the spices. Stick container in Refrigerator. Since cucumbers are one of my goto snacks when dieting, I might start eating them right away. The do improve with age although, I have never had a batch last more than ten days.

My biggest diet problem started today. I went to the vegetable market and many merchants had out of season Julie mangoes. Also, soursop is in season, these are two of my favorite fruits. For a dollar a fruit, one pound, I brought two of each. Guess we get a chance to see how poor my will power is. Mangoes have about 210 calories with 200 from sugars and a soursop has over 400 calories with about 375 from sugars. However, I cant resist the flavor of fresh ripe locally grown fruit. I will attempt daily progress reports as I beat myself down to 180 pounds to start the new year.

When I used to visit Aunt Adel, she used to prepare a six course Italian meal described by her as “Everything from Soup to Nuts.” Now any one of the courses could have been a meal unto itself but if you were really Italian, which I was not, you learned to pace yourself, which I did not.

I never much thought about the purpose of each course and why some foods were alleged to go together until I first started thinking about the Inflammation Factor and healthy anti-inflammatory spices. Now as I mentioned before on the post on pumpkin soup, the addition of a chicken breast and some carrots makes this a hearty meal and since pumpkin is still on sale, I decided to check it out and find out how healthy it was.

I went to the Nutritionaldata site to check for the calories, protein, carbohydrates and Inflammation Factor for each ingredient including a chicken breast and carrots. I added up the totals for everything in the pot and was amazed at how healthy this soup really is and how high the anti -inflammatory qualities are. The results have been divided in two to reflect that the pot holds enough food for two people or two meals.

Calories 319
Protein 46
Carbohydrates 30
Inflammation Factor 709

Now this is a very impressive balanced low calorie anti-inflammatory meal, just the type I wanted to experiment with on my detox. Since I never do anything half way, I added fresh grated ginger, hot pepper and celery and more than doubled the anti-inflammatory properties without altering the other values by much.

I begin to see the concept of “Soup to Nuts” when I checked the anti-inflammatory properties of Almonds which Aunt Adel traditionally served at the end of the meal and found out they also had a positive influence. The concept would appear to be that if the meal started with and ended with foods high in anti-inflammatory properties, you could indulge in whatever you liked in the middle courses.

Pinto bean Curry

This new knowledge got me to thinking about other old world foods so I checked on some Indian Recipes while searching for a vegan recipe. The pinto bean recipe was also an original Indian recipe and unmodified by me as I don’t know enough about Indian Foods to alter the spice blends, but “I know what I like.” Once again I was utterly amazed at how high the anti-inflammatory properties are.

Calories 586
Protein 19
Carbohydrates 82
Inflammation Factor 1141

I guess in the old days, the people of the world did not have the luxury of picking and choosing what they were going to eat and just ate whatever was available to survive. To compensate for what might be the ill effects of refined flour and white rice, they just added spices and balance to the meals and got on with their lives. In many of these cultures, people live longer than Americans despite drinking too much wine and eating refined grains and starches so, I guess spices could be important.

In my mind, the jury on anti-inflammatory foods is still out but I intend to monitor what I naturally eat for the next year and make my decision after I go through a winter where my level of aches and pains traditionally increases.

When you Google “Crucian Cherry”, the only thing that comes up is a cute little song by local entertainer Jazzy Blue extolling the virtue of this berry and the fact that you can’t just eat one because the first one makes you want more. But since one of my three trees is heavily bearing, I decided to see how much harm I was doing by eating several handfuls three times a day. I had also heard our Crucians of Puerto Rican heritage call it Arecibo Cherry so decided to search that term. I ended up with the right answer for the wrong reason. Seems that this tree is called the acerola tree which just means cherry in Spanish. Hence calling them Acerola Cheries is just like calling them Cherry Cherries. Of course we do the same thing when we order or make Shrimp Scampi because Scampi means shrimp in Italian.

But my search was made to find out if my addiction to these tasty morsels is causing me damage. After all, a handful may have 5 or 6 cherries and doing three handfuls twice a day will give a total of 30 cherries which weighs about a pound. Fortunately, I only get about three crops a year and they only are ripe for a couple of weeks. My scale tells me a big Julie Mango a few times a week does more damage to my weight so the question really became one about if Crucian Cherries are any good for you.

From nutritiousfruit.com, I found that Acerola cherry is juicy, sweet and sour in flavor and “very high in vitamin C and other nutrients. It is incredible and unbelievable that one tiny cherry has a higher vitamin C content than an orange. Specifically, the vitamin C content is 65 times greater than an orange, which means one cherry has a vitamin C content that is equal to the minimum daily recommended requirements.”

I am not sure whether or not I really eat a pound a day of these things but even if I did, it really wouldn’t matter. With only 100 calories per pound, I am now eating 120 times the daily requirement of vitamin C. This bulk loading of Vitamin C is supposed to be useful for fighting pain, healing cuts, bruises damaged muscles and keeping colds and flu away. I eat them because I like them, but it’s still nice to know I get something right once in awhile.

I simply like black beans and complex flavors and this meal just popped into my head. I have eaten similar meals with barley made with chicken stock but this time I had a cup of cooked brown rice made with no flavoring or salt so it could easily be accompanied by strong flavors. Since it was a vegan start and I hadn’t defrosted any meat, I decided to stick with the genera.

The starting point was the red beans and brown rice which I had done a while back. In that recipe, I had started with uncooked rice and used vegetable broth instead of water and cooked it all day. I also used less spices. This time I only had about 5 hours which is enough for canned beans and cooked rice. Well the meal was full flavored and complex, I loved it but only ate about half of the cooked beans and tomatoes. The rice was 200 calories and the rest of the pot was less than 800 so I only had about 600 calories and was very comfortable. Even if I had eaten all, it would have ended up at less than a 1000 calories for dinner.

1. Put all ingredients in the coffeepot and cook covered with a piece of foil for about 2 hours.

2. Add the Beans and tomatoes and all of the liquid to the pot.

3. Stir and let cook for another 2 hours.

4. Microwave cooked rice for 3 minutes.

5. Serve and Enjoy!!!

The most amazing epiphany I had with this meal is that 600 calories would really satisfy me. When I started my lifestyle change, I used to consume as much as 5000 to 6000 calories a day. including food and beverages and couldn’t concieve of a meal without meat.

Without thinking about it yesterday, I ate 1/2 coconut which has 700 calories, small amounts of celery probably less than 100 calories including dip, dinner 600 calories and wine 1000 calories or 2400 calories. I also walked 3 miles and worked in my yard for a few hours. Pretty much, I act like this everyday and I have lost all the weight I recently gained on vacations (about 10 pounds). I am now at 172 pounds with a 37 inch waste. That is down from 265 pounds with a 56 inch waist at my peak and 245 pounds with a 47 inch waist at the the start of my commitment to a lifestyle change.

Imagine that meatless days by choice and no perceived sacrifice. Amazing!!!

Good, better, best.
Never let it rest.
Until your good is better
and your better is best.

Cooked Bok Choy

With all the Bok Choy in my garden, I had to keep searching for a low sodium way to prepare it or else keep giving it away. I found this recipe over at allrecipes.com and there are a few differences other than it calls for no salt at all. With a cooking time of 15 minutes, it is a lot longer than any of the other stir fry recipes I had seen. It also includes capers, vinegar and lemon juice to essentially give this bland vegetable some more flavor beyond the ginger and garlic. Well of course I wasn’t going to buy red wine vinegar just to test the recipe and with a lime tree outside my kitchen door, I thought it senseless to buy a lemon when I use lime for every recipe that calls for lemon and like the taste. So with these very minor changes, the Bok Choi turned out excellent and I will be eating more of it and testing other low sodium recipes with a little longer cooking time.

Last week the winds brought down partially ripe breadfruit from a tree and I got 3 of them. Now breadfruit is one of those items that is best eaten in the green phase as when ripe, it gets a very sweet taste and has the consistency of custard I am not fond of the ripe ones. Even green it is not a popular vegetable in the Virgin Islands but gets more popular in the Eastern Caribbean. When I was in St. Kitts last summer a friend prepared Breadfruit Plantains and they are fantastic.

They are essentially fried and when cooked for only five minutes they are according to my granddaughters who did not know I made a switch with regular white potatoes, the best French Fries they had ever eaten. When they are cooked for 15 minutes or so, they turn a golden brown and get very crispy like a potato chip. I like them both ways and have been know to over indulge since you start with a whole breadfruit weighing about four pounds and you can fry another batch ever 5 to 10 minutes.

Since I had three breadfruit to play with, I started searching for other recipes. It seems the first recipe I found was called “Soused Breadfruit” which I had never heard of nor could I find it anywhere on the web other than that one recipe. But in the West Indies, most souse recipes call for Vinegar and oil which is the basis for Puerto Rican Escabeche so I expanded my search for Panas en Escabeche.

Essentially, these is just like the Green Banana salad (Escabeche de Guineos) previously published. You dice the Breadfruit after pealing and discarding the seed. The breadfruit cubes are boiled for about 20- to 25 minutes which makes them soft to a fork. All of the other ingredients are added to the bowl and tossed.

This time I had green and red bell peppers so I used both. Also I had a cucumber that I wanted to use up so, I pealed it and sliced it very thin with a cheese slicer and added that to the salad. It was a pretty good salad but not as good as “the Best French Fries ever.”

So what has this got to do with Bok Choy? My friend Gloria loves Bok Choy and at 90 pounds is not worried about salt and high blood pressure from traditional stir fried recipes which are really quite good. Gloria Powell (www.antilleslilies.com) is a event florist on St, Croix heavily involved in working with tourists who want to get married in a St. Croix celebration.The solution, I made a trade of my excess arugula and Bok Choy for her gift of flowers. She also bought me a glass of wine.

While I had been lazy in 2011, Monica has been busy Running her Dinner Club, appearing on Television and even publishing new recipes. Of course as I returned to creative cooking and eating, I was delighted to find a powerful vegan dish, Jeera Aloo or cumin potatoes and decided to adapt it to my coffeepot.

I like my food spicy and this boiled potato has eight different spices and I decided to leave out the salt. That was a poor but correctable decision as I added the salt prior to eating at the table and it perked up all the other flavors. But then, I really should have know better than trying to second guess Monica of the Spice Diary. The next time I cook this meal, I will add a piece of scotch bonnet pepper as I like the traditional Caribbean hot pepper flavor and know it will merge very well with the rest of the flavors.

Jeera Aloo (Cumin Potatoes) – Coffeepot Style

Ingredients:

1 large or two small potatoes – I used red and didn’t bother pealing them.

1/2 tsp salt or according taste

½ tsp paprika powder

1/2 tsp dried mango powder (amchur)

1/2 tsp garam masala

1 smallonion, thinly sliced

3 tbsp olive oil

1 tsp cumin seeds

1/2 tsp mustard seeds

pinch of asafoetida (optional)

1 T dried coriander, chopped

Instructions:

1. Put cubed bite-sized potato and a ½ tsp of salt in the coffeepot and pass water through the unit to cover the potatoes.

2. After unit is done perking, cover the pot with foil and cook until tender. (1-2 hours, test with a fork.)